Search results

1

Zlom mezi „totalitou“ a „demokracií“. Československý rok 1989 v alternativách

100%

Suk J.

Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)

|

2009

|

issue 4

557-601

EN

The consideration of hypothetical alternatives to historical development in clearly established general conditions are, the author believes, a natural part of historical thinking. In this article he looks at the ‘Velvet Revolution’, that short period from the collapse of the Communist régime to the pushing through of a democracy in Czechoslovakia in November and December 1989, which for him becomes the space for such hypothetical refl ections. In the historical records he seeks the key junctures in developments, and tries to outline the directions or paths that the political actors and members of the public could have set out on, but did not. In each case he starts from the assumption that one important factor of the previous events has changed. First of all, he asks whether a possibility of fundamental change had begun to emerge even before 17 November 1989, and he seeks to answer the question with regard to the infl uence of Gorbachev’s perestroika. He calls the Reform Communists, who had been expelled from the Party, the legitimate potential Czechoslovak actors of perestroika. These Communists were based around the Klub pro socialistickou přestavbu Obroda (Renewal, the Club for Socialist Restructuring), and sought to continue the ideals of the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968. Like every other potential opposition group, however, they were kept down by the ‘normalization’ régime. In circumstances in which the Soviet Union, of its own accord, was ceasing to intervene directly in the affairs of the other Soviet bloc states (which in Czechoslovakia meant the petrifi cation of the ‘conservative’ structures of power), the reformists’ chances were, the author argues, very limited. He then considers the fundamental interpretations, which emerged in the 1990s, of the Velvet Revolution as a conspiracy. The core of the article is a consideration of the probability, the concrete forms, and possible consequences of six possible outcomes of developments: ( i ) after the brutal police action against the demonstrators on Národní třída, Prague, on 17 November 1989, the would not have led to the spreading of the false report about the killing of a student named Martin Šmíd which mobilized the Czechoslovak public; ( ii ) the leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist Party would have tended to some kind of violent solution to the crisis with the help of the army on the ‘Chinese model’; ( iii ) in the revolutionary days the existing Communist leadership would have joined forces with the former reform Communists with the aim of preserving a Socialist régime; ( iv ) in December 1989 the Civic Forum would not have managed to get the Federal Assembly to elect Václav Havel President of Czechoslovakia, and in the following months the president would have been elected by popular vote from amongst several candidates, as had been proposed by the Communist Party; ( v ) the Civic Forum and the Public Against Violence as the revolutionary representatives would have rejected the compromise solution of handing over power at ‘Round Table’ negotiations, and would instead have dictated the terms and conditions of the victory, including the introduction of a plurality electoral system; ( vi ) the political actors of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ would, in the fi rst month, have effectively concentrated on the problem of coming to terms with the Communist past, which, in the form of uncompromising anticommunism, began from January 1990 onwards to convulse the political scene, and remains a sore point to this day.

2

Politické hry s nedokončenou revolucí. Účtování s komunismem v čase Občanského fóra a jeho rozpadu (1989–1992)

100%

Suk J.

Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)

|

2009

|

issue 2-3

276-312

EN

This article discusses the birth and early dynamics of Czech post-Communist anti-Communism. It is based on the recognition that during the political takeover in November and December 1989 the policy of radical discontinuity remained a marginal, practically invisible and inaudible phenomenon in the mostly restful period of civil unrest. In the generally shared atmosphere of ‘national understanding’, which led to the historic compromise between the old, Socialist régime and the new, democratic régime, there was no room for a policy of radically settling scores with the Communist Party and the past. It was all the more surprising, therefore, when demands along these lines (the relinquishing of Party property, the outlawing of the Party, the punishment of criminal and treasonous politicians) appeared as if out of nowhere as early as the beginning of 1990, and then intensifi ed. Memory was awakened and its numerous previously buried levels now emerged in public life. The incursion of the dark, unrecognized, and unprocessed past into the artifi cial reality of historic compromise caused frustration with ethics in the ranks of the nascent political élite. It was but a small step from the political prisoners’ awakened memories of crimes committed by the recently defeated régime to the now current problems with the ‘nomenclature brotherhoods’ and ‘Communist mafi as’ in the provinces and in businesses throughout the country. Calls for a thorough settling of scores were heard with increasing frequency from Civic Forum (Občanské fórum), the victorious political movement, and they eventually became the catalyst of the pronounced division within the Civic Forum. But these calls never turned into a decisive political strategy and they managed to hold a dominant place only in the programmes of the less important parties and organizations like the Club of Engage Non-Party Members (Klub angažovaných nestraníků – KAN) and the Confederation of Political Prisoners (Konfederace politických vězňů). After the break-up of Civic Forum in late 1990 and early 1991, radical anti-Communism ran out steam, and the right-of-centre political parties that emerged from the erstwhile Civic Forum – primarily the Civic Democratic Party, the Civic Democratic Alliance, and the Christian Democratic Party – adapted the originally radical demands to a realistic policy of compromise based on the fact that the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, with the support of more than ten per cent of the electorate, remained a part of the democratic political system. The largely ignored sense of frustration with morals, stemming from the fundamental contradiction between the ideal (that is, comprehensive) possibilities of a policy of settling scores and the real (that is, limited) possibilities, was put off for later years, and remains a public problem to this day.

3

Je v pražském jaru 1968 alternativa k dnešnímu kapitalismu? Politická úvaha nad historickou interpretací

100%

Suk J.

Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)

|

2010

|

issue 3

461-467

EN

In this article, inspired by Jiří Hoppe’s Opozice ’68: Sociální demokracie, KAN a K 231 v období Pražského jara (Prague: Prostor 2009), the author considers the paradoxical attitudes of society and politicians in 1968 and the question of whether an alternative to the capitalist system had been born at that time (as was claimed by the Reform Communists back then and is argued by some left-wing intellectuals today). In the spring of 1968 the reformist politicians found themselves stuck between Kremlin pressure on the one hand and an awakening civil society on the other. They had no intention of relinquishing power, which they ultimately derived from the authority of Moscow, and they also longed to retain popularity and regain legitimacy from the public, whose intentions were quite contrary to Moscow’s. The public underwent a spontaneous, but civilly disciplined, diversifi cation and pluralization of views, interests, and expectations, which, however, did not manage to crystallize clearly. In the summer of 1968, and particularly after the military occupation of the country, an illusory unity predominated between the politicians and the public, based on a fatal misunderstanding. In the street protests the political programme of liberty and independence was born and the public expected it would be defended by the Czechoslovak politicians interned in Moscow. But those men never wanted to go so far. For them it was more important to hold on to power and maintain the socialism that society now tended to perceive as an ideal rather than as a programme aim. In freedom there would necessarily have been a confrontation of various expectations and interests, which would not have remained limited to ‘democratic socialism’, as was the case after the Changes of November 1989. The author concludes by taking issue with the conclusions of Jan Mervart’s contribution to this block of articles. In his emphasizing the necessity of another, more exact kind of research on 1968, one based on theoretical starting points of social history and freed from the obsolete theory of totalitarianism, the author perceives a belief in the possibility of history as a neutral fi eld of scholarship, stripped of political or ideological preferences and assumptions. Though the ‘resurrected conception’ of the Prague Spring of 1968, which Mervart criticizes, was substituted for by another conception, one which would be based, for example, on the radical reform potential of the Municipal Committees of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, that would surely also have its political contingencies and consequences.

Refine search results

3 Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)

3 Suk J.

1 2010

2 2009

Zlom mezi „totalitou“ a „demokracií“. Československý rok 1989 v alternativách

Politické hry s nedokončenou revolucí. Účtování s komunismem v čase Občanského fóra a jeho rozpadu (1989–1992)

Je v pražském jaru 1968 alternativa k dnešnímu kapitalismu? Politická úvaha nad historickou interpretací